1. Field of Invention
The invention relates to a communication apparatus, such as a facsimile machine having a base unit and handsets that receive and display electronic mail (e-mail) data.
2. Description of Related Art
A recent-model facsimile machine has a base unit and handsets. The base unit receives e-mail data and displays and prints the received e-mail data, and the handsets receive e-mail data via the base unit and display the received e-mail data. Usually, e-mail data transmitted from a sender and arriving at a remote center, which functions as a mail server, is received by a recipient's device in response to a transmission request from the recipient's device to the remote center. The remote center also offers another mail service by which newly-arrived e-mail data is automatically transferred to the recipient's device. Typically, the base unit of the facsimile machine receives, as a gateway, e-mail data transmitted by request or transmitted automatically and stores the received e-mail data in its memory. When the e-mail data is confirmed using each handset, each handset retrieves the e-mail data received by the base unit and displays the retrieved e-mail data on a display of each handset.
However, when e-mail data is stored in the memory of the base unit as described above, e-mail data containing a private message cannot be confidentially confirmed on the display of each handset. In this case, by operating the base unit, the e-mail data can also be confirmed on a display of the base unit.